Readings and Performances Towards a Philosophy of Jet Lag

An evening of live performance and readings instigated by curator Mohamed Almusibli who’ll be joined by multi-disciplinary artists Deborah Joyce Holman, Marilyn Umurungi and Jan Vorisek. With the works tackling notions of placement/displacement by focusing on the journey/travel as a point of initiation – Almusibli will share a new presentation of the text piece Towards a Philosophy of Jet Lag in collaboration with Umurungi.

Paralleled by Voriseks improvised drone and feedback music utilising low frequencies, subwoofers and microphones separating and amplifying each other. Vorisek will then share his own sound based solo performance considering the ingrained violence of the subject matter. And in a new presentation of newly developed works, comprising themes of dis/orientation, Deborah Joyce Holman and Marilyn Umurungi will each perform a live reading in the space.

Mohamed Almusibli work is distinctly interdisciplinary, using his own or found texts for installation, sound and video-works as well as performance. He is also an active curator alongside his artistic practise. His own writing is often the result of personal poetic anecdotes that find their way into a common space through questioning and depicting our shared human emotions, beliefs and values. Mohamed’s work could therefore be seen as political, albeit on a personal level. He has a great sense for how to convey a narrative into a spatial setting, where the reader, or listener, acts as an inclusive part of the dramaturgy. Recent exhibitions and performances include Les Urbaines festival, Lausanne; Mikro, Zurich; Arcadia Missa Gallery, London among others. He currently curates exhibitions at the Dynamo Project Room in Zurich and at Truth and Consequences Gallery in Geneva.

Deborah Joyce Holman is an artist and curator. In her work, she explores uses of language through various materials. Fluidity being an important element of her practice, artistic as well as curatorial, some of the recurring themes in her work are the constant negotiation within notions of authorship, subjectivity, representation and presence in online and offline spheres, the interweaving of fiction, truths and facts and concepts of intrapersonal communication and mythologies – as some of the facets of contemporary existence. Recently, her work was included in the group show Extime at Live In Your Head, Geneva and in the double exhibitions Rich, since my pinky points at me at Alienze, Lausanne and Elemental Gestures at Topic, Geneva. She’s the founder and co-director of 1.1, a platform for emerging practices in arts and music with an exhibition space in Basel, she has curated …and their tooth, finest gold, the 2018 edition of Les Urbaines’s visual arts exhibition in Lausanne and has initiated a still unnamed reading group for people of colour with Moya DeYoung.

Marilyn Umurungi was born in Rwanda 1985 and lives today as a decolonial poetess and activist in Zurich. Her work talks about interconnectivity of racism and capitalism, about demystifying patriarchy, about womynhood and sexuality and about the magic of words.

Jan Vorisek works across sculpture, installation, performance, improvised music and noise. Vorisek’s installations are site-specific commentary, ephemera and documentation – all examining formal hierarchies. With assemblages consisting of used and found materials, as well as sound-producing devices, the artist reflects on the fluctuation of noise as a vessel for information. Accumulated materials and objects are disassembled into their component parts and then subjected to new systems of organization. This can take the form of vertical formations meandering through the room, selective markings or large-scale architectural interventions. The subtly animated structures function as both producer of and resonant space for sounds, which test and exceed the limits of perceptibility. Jan Vorisek’s self-performing structures and scores are complemented by edits of sounds recorded outdoors– echos of urban space — in which “inside” merges with “outside” and exact dimensions of the work remain undefined. Recent solo presentations include „Crisis Instrument“ Observation Society, (2018 Guangzhou), Burst City, TG Gallery (2017, Nottingham),“Total Fragmented Darkness”, Hard Hat (2017, Geneva); “Rented Bodies”, Galerie Bernhard (2015, Zurich). He has shown in group shows including at Swiss Institute New York (2018), Kunsthalle St.Gallen (2016/17); 83 Pittstreet (2016, New York). Together with Mathis Altmann and Lhaga Koondhor he organizes a series of club nights called HOUSE OF MIXED EMOTIONS or in short H.O.M.E.

Readings and Performances Towards a Philosophy of Jet Lag will be held at Auto Italia on Saturday 23rd of March 2019.